From the decaying plazas of City 17 to the wide expanses of Hyrule, the virtual spaces we inhabit in games come to feel as familiar as our own neighbourhoods. A new book sets out to map, explore and unearth the history and design details of urban spaces in video games, including Fallout’s New Vegas, Yakuza’s Kamurocho and the fog-shrouded streets of Silent Hill.

Advertisement

WIRED spoke to Dimopoulos, an engineer with a PhD in urban planning and geography who moved into full-time game development and consulting in 2010, about environmental storytelling, believability and his picks for gaming's most distinctive uses of urban design.

WIRED: How does one go about becoming an expert in the urban planning of imaginary places?

Read next

Borderlands 3's dynamic levelling fixes online gaming's biggest flaw

ByMatt Kamen

Konstantinos Dimopoulos: I suppose there are several ways of approaching the incredibly wide and occasionally terrifyingly deep subject of game cities. Urban planners, not unlike geographers or game designers, really have to be generalists. Rigid engineering knowledge and an understanding of sociology have to be combined with the humanities, the economy, art, politics, and popular culture, and that's before even adding anything related to games and game design to the mix.

So, though studies in urbanism would definitely help, I believe that it is a wide spectrum of interests along with a love of gaming and storytelling that are really required. An imaginary city is, after all, a narrative with a strong spatial aspect. Oh, and reading a lot definitely helps.

Advertisement

Half-Life 2's City 17 sketched for Virtual Cities

Maria Kallikaki / Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Which game cities exemplify convincing urban design for you?

City 17 from Half-Life 2, and New Orleans from the original Gabriel Knight instantly come to mind whenever I try to think of my favourite game cities. Though they are vastly different to each other, and neither of them are game cities that have been intricately designed in their entirety, both manage to create a convincing, engrossing and occasionally fascinating sense of spatial immersion.

Read next

A UK ban on loot boxes could kill FIFA Ultimate Team as we know it

ByAmit Katwala

To be absolutely honest, it is the illusion of urbanism that interests me the most, and not the elegance of its design on a scientific level.

Advertisement

Of course, open world cities like the wonderful ones found in the Assassin's Creed games, or incredibly imaginative and detailed places like Fallen London are also amazing to me. I'd recommend visiting Ant Attack's Antescher on the ZX Spectrum, too.

How does good urban design translate to gameplay?

At the very least, good urban design and thoughtful city planning ensure that a game's urban setting is believable, engrossing and hopefully immersive.

It would thus be an important part of any world-building attempt, and consequently inform the overall quality of the experience. Addressing the design and organization of cities can also provide tons of narrative hooks and storytelling solutions.

Read next

The web's creepiest fictional wiki is now a mind-bending video game

ByAron Garst

Obviously, solid geographic and economic rules are pretty fundamental in city-building sims, and other similar games where civic construction, management and function are of paramount importance. What's more, urban planning (and its quality) also influences gameplay aspects of other genres rather heavily too.

It can, for example, dictate how difficult the navigation of open-world cities is, provide with satisfying arenas for close combat, offer demanding courses to race through, provide a town with fortifications that make sense and allow for dark corners perfect for hiding, or panoramic positions ready to serve snipers.

Depending on the project, urban planning might actually be the most crucial element of level and even game design.

What makes or breaks urban design in a game?

Read next

The best Nintendo Switch games, ranked

ByWill Bedingfield

Games can get away with quite a lot, but when mistakes and omissions start piling up, players are bound to notice. We are a species of increasingly experienced urban dwellers and even when we can't pinpoint what exactly is wrong, we certainly do know when a virtual city feels off.

What makes or breaks urban design in a video game would have to be the designer's understanding (or lack thereof) of what makes cities tick – why and how these complex societal creations work. Whenever development teams realize they have to apply real-life urban planning and geographical tools and knowledge, research accordingly and try to think past the architectural level, we do tend to experience some excellent results.

To keep things even safer, designers can focus on recreating and interpreting real places, where most of the planning has already been done for them, and a vast amount of often forgotten details have already been included. From the epic recreation of LA Noire to the moody environments of Gabriel Knight, actual places come with built-in authenticity.

Maria Kallikaki / Konstantinos Dimopoulos

Jane Jensen, interestingly, had never visited New Orleans before shipping Gabriel Knight, and yet by wisely choosing an evocative urban setting, understanding what made it unique, doing her research, utilizing a convincing map and wisely picking what to show made adventurers feel they were really there.

You've worked on a number of games yourself - could you tell us a bit about the design ethos you took to them?

I have worked on projects that are, happily, too varied to allow for a single design ethos to be applied. And yet from MMOs to text adventures and from city builders to immersive sims, the thing I always keep in mind is that virtual cities (or the tools we provide players to build them with) simply have to make sense.

Advertisement

That may sound overly vague, too obvious or just needlessly all-encompassing, but I both consider it crucial and know that such a simple rule can easily be ignored.

What making sense actually means is that, regardless of its level of whimsy or utterly exotic location, each city must adhere to certain rules. Just like deciding that gravity exists in a game will have to mean that things fall downwards, and with the exact same absolute necessity, deciding that a game will feature settlements means these will have to actually be habitable in order to exist. They will have to come with at least certain fundamental urban functions, and a compelling reason for their existence.

Virtual city tour: seven of gaming's best urban environments

City 17 - Half-Life 2

"One of the most iconic, and also economically designed game cities ever created. The Citadel Tower serves as a defining and multi-functional landmark, the place's history is evident for all to see, and everything feels grounded in reality."

New Orleans - Gabriel Knight: The Sins of the Fathers

"A fine example of just how brilliantly adventure games are able to imply vast, living, breathing cities with a couple of maps, great writing, and some well-selected locations."

Rubacava - Grim Fandango

"I can't say whether it all boils down to the wondrous world building, the brilliant fusion of architectural styles, or the sheer excellence of the game itself, but this is one of the most memorable virtual cities I have ever visited. One I keep revisiting every couple of years, too."

Silent Hill - Silent Hill

"Not many studios could pull off creating such a successfully confusing, and horrifying town that never felt off on the original PlayStation, but Konami went on and did it."

London - Fallen London

"Based on an outrageously delicious concept Fallen London is a bit like actual London, only slightly closer to Hell and made up almost entirely of some of gaming's finest words. It's an utterly unique, utterly fascinating place."

London - Assassin's Creed Syndicate

"Crafting an open world version of the world's first metropolis sounds insanely ambitious, yet Ubisoft did manage to somehow abstract and generalise London successfully."

New Bordeaux - Mafia III

"Few imaginary places feel as real as New Bordeaux. Its varied architectural styles, vibrant public spaces, and care for the natural geography and its environs make it a city that could be mistaken for real."